The Thief of Time

by John Boyne

  ‘She wasn’t here from childhood too then?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Jack, shaking his head. ‘She’s only been here a few years. Maybe three years. Well, me and Elsie, we became friends right from the start and we started going for walks and things together, you know the lark. Pretty soon we were more than friends but it weren’t more than a casual thing. We could take or leave each other most of the time, I think. You know how it is.’ I nodded; I did, after all, know a little of how it was. For although the only true romantic relationship I had known had been far from casual, all my other sexual exploits had been either paid for or with the street girls in Dover. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘then Nat comes down here one weekend, takes one look at my Elsie and thinks he could do worse than have a go at her. So he starts coming on strong to her and I told you already what happened next.’

  ‘He got her,’ I said simply.

  ‘Oh, he got her all right,’ said Jack, ‘and then he barely spoke to her again. Near broke her heart. She thought she was about to become the lady of the manor, the stupid tart, what was she doing falling for a short-arse dog like him?’

  At those words the door to the kitchen opened and the short-arse dog himself stepped inside, bearing a tall candle. I jumped, wondering whether he’d been outside all that time, listening to us. ‘Hello, boys,’ he said, stepping towards the pantry and barely looking at us as he walked by. I guessed he hadn’t or he just didn’t care about our opinion of him. ‘What are you two doing in here so late? Finished your work, have you?’

  I waited for Jack to speak, him having the authority in the case as it were, but an embarrassing amount of time passed by without him saying a word. I stared across at him, urging him to answer, but he simply took a long swig from his bottle and smiled at me.

  ‘All finished, sir,’ I said eventually. ‘The horses are ready for tomorrow.’

  Nat stepped out of the pantry, peering at the labels on the two bottles of wine he had taken before looking with just as much discernment down at me. He waited a while before speaking, as if he was trying to figure out exactly why he was holding a conversation with someone as far down the food chain as myself, before stepping closer towards us both. I could smell the smoke and alcohol on him already and wondered what condition he would be in in the morning by the time the hunt began.

  ‘We’ll be riding out at eleven tomorrow, boys,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what instructions Davies has given you but that’s when the hunt starts so we’ll need the horses ready in plenty of time prior to that.’

  ‘We’re here from seven, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I suppose that will be time enough.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Hadn’t you ought to be getting off to bed then if you have to be up that early? I don’t want you late.’ He smiled down at us and I smiled back in order to make myself agreeable but Jack barely moved. I noticed that Nat kept looking across at him a little apprehensively, as if he was worried that he might suddenly overturn the table and throttle him. The atmosphere of sheer distaste was palpable in the room. ‘Ill be off then,’ he said eventually. ‘Until tomorrow.’

  He closed the door quietly behind him and I breathed a sigh of relief. I was sure that he was going to make some mention of the fact that we were both drinking his father’s beer when he knew just as well as we did that it was off limits to us, but he had either not cared or not noticed.

  ‘You’re not scared of him, are you, Mattie?’ asked Jack after a moment, eyeing me suspiciously. I laughed.

  ‘Scared of him?’ I said. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

  ‘He’s just a man, after all,’ he replied. ‘Hardly even that.’

  I sat back in the chair and thought about it. I wasn’t scared of him, Jack was wrong about that. I’d come across a lot more threatening individuals than Nat Pepys in my time and managed to see most of them off. But I was intimidated. I wasn’t much used to authority and I certainly wasn’t used to it when it was only a year or two older than I was myself. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was definitely something about Nat Pepys that made me nervous. T looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall as it struck midnight.

  ‘I’d better be off,’ I said, draining my bottle and putting it in my pocket as I stood up in order to discard it in a ditch on the way home to the Ambertons’. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Jack raised his own bottle to me in salute but said nothing as I opened the door, letting in a sudden brace of moonlight, and stepped back out into the cold. As I turned the corner to go down the driveway I could see the window reflecting the entertainment that Nat was putting on for his friends; it was noisy and boisterous and I could hear a man’s voice shouting about something and then silence as a young girl began to sing. In the half-light, I looked around me at this vast house in which I worked and wondered whether I would ever be able to live like that myself. How are some people born into lives like this? I wondered. And what does one have to do to attain such wealth?

  But I was wrong if I thought it could never be my turn.

  Dominique and one of the more presentable kitchen maids had been hand-picked by Nat to stand near the stables with trays of port on the morning of the hunt. They were dressed in the smartest outfits which could be provided for them and it was clear that the attention of most of the males in the party was directed towards my ‘sister’. She was aware of it, I think, but barely looked at any of them as she moved from person to person, offering drinks, smiling politely, enjoying the attention. I had grinned when I saw her emerge from the kitchen, in the way that one often smiles to see a friend dressed to the nines, but she practically ignored me, obviously perceiving some sort of professional superiority to me.

  Jack and I led the horses out and tied them at various stages around the yard. As Nat and his friends wandered around, helping themselves to drinks from Dominique’s tray, they also ignored both of us, complimenting the horses on their fine appearance, as if they had had anything to do with it. Jack didn’t care – he barely noticed, I think -but it bothered me a little, for I had worked hard and felt as if some recognition of that fact was in order. I was young.

  Eventually the hunt began and the troop of dogs and horses disappeared through the gates of Cageley House and into the vast countryside that lay beyond with no small amount of commotion. For minutes afterwards I could hear the incessant yapping of the dogs as they chased out over the hills, and the hollow notes played by the horns which followed them. As Dominique and her friend Mary-Ann began their work in the kitchen, preparing the food for later and clearing away the glasses which had already been used, Jack and I stepped inside for our morning break. The two girls were giggling about something as we entered but stopped suddenly as they saw us, throwing knowing glances towards each other which, by their very nature, excluded Jack and me. As usual, he headed straight for the pantry to help himself to whatever was on offer while I took my seat at the table, hoping for some friendly words from Dominique, something that would prove to me that she still cared.

  ‘I’d like to go on one of them hunts myself,’ said Mary-Ann, pulling a huge sack of potatoes in from the pantry and collapsing in a kitchen chair with a large pot of water by her feet as she started to peel them. ‘The way they all get to dress up like that and ride around the countryside. Beats sitting here peelin’ spuds, that’s for sure.’

  ‘You’d fall off your horse if you tried it,’ said Jack quickly. ‘You’d break your bloody neck. When was the last time you sat on the back of a horse?’

  ‘I could learn, couldn’t I? It can’t be that difficult if the likes of Nat Pepys can manage it.’

  ‘He’s probably been doing it all his life,’ I said, standing up for Jack’s position, and Dominique shot me a look of disgust. ‘But you could probably manage it anyway,’ I muttered then in order to appease her.

  ‘You heard about his engagement, of course,’ said Mary-Ann after a few moments, her face contorting into a mask of I-know-something-you-don’t-know. We all l
ooked at her in surprise.

  ‘Nat’s getting married?’ asked Jack; it was clearly news to him.

  ‘Not any more he ain’t,’ said Mary-Ann. ‘It was said that he was about to become engaged to some tart in London. The daughter of one of his father’s friends, I heard. But they say she found out that he’d gone and got himself drunk and gone off to one of them houses where no gentleman should be seen going and she broke it off with him because of it.’

  Jack snorted a laugh. ‘Lucky her,’ he said. ‘I mean, after all, who in their right mind would want to marry that ugly -’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘He ain’t so bad. Plus he’s got a third share of this place coming to him one day and that can’t be bad. Money has a wonderful way of distracting you from a man’s face, you know.’

  ‘That’s what you like about him then, is it, Mary-Ann?’ asked Jack, shaking his head contemptuously. ‘There’s a lot more to a man than the things he owns, you know.’

  ‘Funny that,’ she replied, sniffing slightly as she concentrated on her potatoes. ‘Usually it’s only them that has things that comes out with lines like that. Not those who haven’t got two pennies to rub together.’

  I looked around at my surroundings and thought how wonderful it would be to be simply born into money, to inherit it without having to do a single thing along the way. ‘A man like him could never make a woman happy,’ I said then, anxious to please Jack, who barely acknowledged what I was saying anyway. Mary-Ann let out a loud laugh.

  ‘And what would the likes of you know about pleasing a woman?’ she screamed, the tears rolling down her cheek. ‘You’ve probably never so much as held a girl’s hand. You’re just a baby still.’ I said nothing, just looked down at the table, blushing furiously, aware that Dominique had turned around to the sink and was standing with her back to us all. ‘What about it, girl?’ asked Mary-Ann, looking at her. ‘Has this brother of yours ever known a woman, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied gruffly. ‘And it’s not something I want to think about, thank you very much. Some of us have work to do even if others haven’t.’ I noticed that she was adopting some of the speech patterns of the area and wondered whether I was as well. Mary-Ann simply laughed some more and, when I did look up again, I could see Jack staring at Dominique’s red face and back at me with an expression which mingled surprise and amusement. I stood up quickly and went back out to the stables.

  When Nat and his friends arrived back at Cageley House later on that evening, they brought with them news of a casualty. I heard them coming from some distance and stood at the top of the driveway, watching as the dogs stormed towards me in a pack, followed by the exhausted horses and their riders. Nat had a passenger on his horse, a young lady whose face was quite pale, except for her eyes which betrayed the fact that she had been crying. The riders all descended and one of the taller young men, not Nat himself, helped her down and carried her into the house. I watched in surprise, wondering what had taken place, as Nat came towards me, his face contorted in worry.

  ‘Bit of an accident,’ he said, not actually bothering to look at me but watching as his friends all went inside, where they were immediately met by the butler. ‘Janet, Miss Logan that is, took a bit of a leap from her horse when it refused at a fence. Sprained her ankle, I think. Poor thing never shut up squealing about it for half an hour.’

  I nodded and looked around me, counting the horses. Eight had gone out but only seven had returned. ‘So where’s her horse?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Ah,’ said Nat, pressing his lips together briefly before scratching his head and giving an innocent shrug. ‘Horse is in a bit of bother actually. It took a bit of a tumble when Janet flew over the top. It fell and gave itself quite a nasty knock. It’s in a bad way.’

  My heart sank inside. Although these were not the horses that I had been attending to over the previous few months, my connection with those belonging to Sir Alfred had instilled in me a love of the creatures which had never existed before. There was a raw strength to them which I admired, a power which we had harnessed and which had become ours to command. I loved the smell of the horses, the feel of them, the way their enormous, wet eyes could stare at you with complete trust. My favourite task at Cageley House was brushing down the horses, pressing the brushes hard into their skins until they whinnied in ecstasy and returned a walnut shine from their shanks which gave credit to our commitment and their beauty. To hear now of an injured horse, any injured horse, upset me. ‘You had to kill it?’ I asked expectantly, and Nat gave an uncaring shrug.

  ‘Didn’t have a gun with me, Zulu,’ he said, mispronouncing my name somewhat. ‘Had to leave the poor creature where she was, collapsed on the ground.’

  ‘You left her there?’ I asked, amazed.

  ‘Well, she couldn’t get up. I think her leg was broken. And, as none of us had a gun and we weren’t about to bash its brains in with a rock, there was nothing we could do. Thought I’d come back here and fetch one of you boys. Where’s Holby anyway?’

  I looked around and could see Jack talking to Dominique through the kitchen window. He took a glance at us and came out slowly, heading towards the seven horses with the intention of beginning our work on them. I went over and explained to him what had happened and he looked at Nat, shaking his head in fury.

  ‘You just left her there?’ he asked, almost echoing my own words. ‘What were you thinking of, Nat? You should carry a gun when you go on a hunt like that in case of emergencies. Any emergencies.’

  ‘It’s Mr Pepys to you, Holby,’ said Nat, his face flushing with anger at the insolence. ‘And I never carry handguns if I can avoid it. For God’s sake,’ he added quickly, ‘all we have to do is go back and kill the creature. It won’t take long.’

  Jack and I stared at him, our bodies erect as his slumped slightly in humiliation. For the first time it became clear to me how much more of a man I was – or Jack for that matter – than this fool. Any deference which existed in me out of a sense of respect for his position left me in that moment and it was all that I could do to keep control of my temper.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Jack eventually, heading towards the house for a gun. ‘Where did you leave her anyway?’

  ‘No,’ snapped Nat, finding his strength again and refusing to allow himself to be pushed around by two inferiors, ‘Zulu can go. And I’ll go with him to show him where she is. You stay here and tend to these horses. I want them watered, fed and cleaned, all right? And make it sharpish.’

  Jack’s mouth opened as if to protest but Nat was already going towards the house himself by now and all I could do was stand there and shrug at him. I went to the stable and took out two of Sir Alfred’s horses, as I didn’t want to exhaust the hunters any more, and led them out just as Nat emerged with a pistol, whose chamber he checked before mounting the horse. He didn’t so much as look at Jack as he rode away and I followed quickly, a far less experienced rider than he, not entirely sure that I could keep pace with him.

  It was a good twenty minutes before Nat found the spot where the horse had fallen. We pulled up at some distance and walked carefully towards her. I was afraid what condition she might be in, whether she might have already died, and hoped inside that she would not in fact even be there; perhaps the injury was not so serious as Nat had thought and she had managed to stand up again and was wandering around lost. But I was not so lucky. The mare, a hazel-hued three-year-old with a large white circle around one of her eyes, lay shaking on a mat of leaves and branches, her head bobbing around spastically, her eyes staring out blindly towards the distance, her mouth foaming slightly in her pain. I recognised the horse from that morning – the white patch gave her away — and she was a beauty, strong and muscular with taut legs in which the muscles and tendons could be identified as she walked. Nat and I stared at the poor creature for a few moments before looking at each other and I thought I could see an iota of regret in his eyes. Once again, I wanted to say, ‘I can
’t believe you just left her here’, but realised that the moment for insolence had passed and that I could instead receive a beating from his whip if I wasn’t careful.

  ‘Well?’ I said eventually, nodding at him and looking towards the pistol which stood out in his jacket pocket. ‘Aren’t you going to do it?’

  He took out the gun and his face grew a little pale. He stared at the butt and licked his dry lips before looking at me. ‘Ever done this, have you? Ever had to kill a horse?’ I shook my head and swallowed hard.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want to now, if it’s all the same to you.’

  He snorted and stared at the gun again for a moment, and the horse, before thrusting it at me. ‘Don’t be such a bloody coward,’ he said quickly. ‘And do as you’re told. Do ... what has to be done.’ I took the gun and knew immediately that he had never done this himself either. ‘Just aim it directly at the beast’s brains and pull the trigger,’ he announced and I could feel the anger swelling within me. ‘Try and get a clean shot though, Zulu, for Christ’s sake,’ he continued. ‘We don’t want to create too much of a mess.’

  He turned around, lifting his boot and wiping at the toe of it with great concentration, waiting for me to take the fatal shot. I looked at the horse, whose movements were as shaky as ever and I knew that for her sake there was no more time to waste. I reached out my hand and settled it around the unfamiliar pistol – a shape I had never had to make before – and covered it with my left hand in order to stop it from shaking. Stepping closer to her head, I looked away and the second I could feel the gorge rise within me, I pulled the trigger and was immediately thrown back with the unfamiliar recoil. Neither of us said anything for a moment – I was stunned and the ringing in my ears took away all memory of the incident for a few seconds. I looked at my work and was pleased to see that the horse had stopped shaking. Through great fortune, I had achieved a clean shot and, with the exception of a smoking circle of red, whose colour leaked down into the horse’s white-patched eye, there did not seem to be any great difference between the scene of a few moments earlier and the one that presented itself now.